As of 2015, the company is the largest private corrections company in the United States. It manages more than 65 correctional and detention facilities with a capacity of more than 90,000 beds in 19 states and the District of Columbia.[3] The company’s revenue in 2012 exceeded $1.7 billion.[4]

Controversies related to the company include: treatment of inmates and disclosure of oversight, lobbying efforts to conceal details of operations, a lawsuit about gang influence in Idaho prison and substantial falsification of records, co-operation with local law enforcement in a school drug sweep, and the deadly 2012 riot in a Mississippi facility.[5]

In 1984, CCA also took over the operations of the Tall Trees non-secure juvenile facility, for the Juvenile Court of Memphis and Shelby County. Two years later, CCA built the 200-bed Shelby Training Center in Memphis to house juvenile male-offenders.

In 2010, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of inmates at the Idaho Correctional Center, claiming that understaffing contributed to the high levels of violence there. In 2014, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began an investigation into CCA management of the ICC to ascertain whether any Federal statutes were violated because of the understaffing of the facility and what had been found to be falsification of staffing records.[13]

In 2016, the Obama Administration provided the CCA a 1 billion no-bid contract to detain asylum seekers from Central America.[14]

Founded in 1983, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) owns or operates jails and prisons on contract with federal, state and local governments. CCA designs, builds, manages and operates correctional facilities and detention centers for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the United States Marshals Service, as well as state and county facilities across the United States.

CCA houses approximately 90,000 offenders and detainees in its more than 60 facilities; it employs more than 17,000 persons nationwide.

The American Correctional Association (ACA) has accredited 90% of CCA's facilities.[15] ACA's Accreditation is a system of verification that correctional agencies and facilities comply with national standards promulgated by the American Correctional Association. Accreditation is achieved through a series of reviews, evaluations, audits and hearings.[16]

On August 18, 2016, Deputy U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates announced that the Justice Department intended to end its Bureau of Prisons contracts with for-profit prison operators, because its own analysis concluded "...the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services..." than the Federal Bureau of Prisons.[17] In a memorandum, Yates continued, for-profit "...prisons served an important role during a difficult period, but time has shown that they compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities. They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department's Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security. The rehabilitative services that the Bureau provides, such as educational programs and job training, have proved difficult to replicate and outsource and these services are essential to reducing recidivism and improving public safety."[18]

A critical aspect of America’s prison system includes reentry and rehabilitation programs for inmates.[19] Such programs often include education, vocational training, addiction treatment as well as faith-based programs.

CCA says it offers basic adult education, post-secondary education, GRE preparation, and testing and literacy programs to all inmates. The Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in 2008 that only 60% of privately run facilities offered programming to inmates. According to national research, providing inmates with education and vocational programs can reduce the likelihood that offenders will commit new offenses upon release and return to prison.[20]

In 1993, CCA launched the LifeLine substance abuse training program at the Metro-Davidson County Detention Facility in Nashville, Tennessee. In the early 21st century, CCA offers the program in 23 of its 60 facilities.[21]

In addition to the reentry and rehabilitation programs, prisons often offer inmates recreational and optional faith-based opportunities. The latter is considered an integral part of inmate rehabilitation[22]

In a 1990s report, Prudential Securities was bullish on CCA but noted, "It takes time to bring inmate population levels up to where they cover costs. Low occupancy is a drag on profits... company earnings would be strong if CCA succeeded in ramp(ing) up population levels in its new facilities at an acceptable rate".[23]

In 2011, responding to an initiative from the State of Ohio to reduce "overhead costs by saving $13 million annually while adding 700 beds to house inmates in the overcrowded system," Corrections Corporation of America agreed to buy the Lake Erie Correctional Institution for $72.7 million. This is a change in company policy, as previously CCA had always constructed their own prisons. Their purchase was contingent on the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction agreeing to contractual occupancy requirements.[24] The failure to find a buyer for many other prisons which the State offered for sale was taken as good news by the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, the union for prison guards.

In 2012, CCA sent a letter to prison officials in 48 states, offering to buy prisons from these states in exchange for a 20-year management contract and a guaranteed occupancy rate of 90%.[25] Community organizations have criticized the proposals, arguing that the contractual obligations of states to fill the prisons to 90% occupancy are poor public policy that could force communities into creating criminals. They believe that these contractual clauses end up costing taxpayers more than state-run prisons would.[26]

CCA was named in 2008 as one of the 100 best corporate citizens by Corporate Responsibility Officer magazine.[27] The national military magazine GI Jobs has highlighted CCA as a solid employer for veterans;[28] It has ranked CCA as one of its "Top 50 Military Friendly Jobs" on four[not in citation given] separate occasions.[29] But in 2010, a Muskogee, Oklahoma federal court jury found CCA guilty of violating the employment rights of a shift supervisor by terminating his job when he was deployed to Iraq. It determined that CCA should pay about $53,000 in damages for violation of the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act.[30] CCA agreed to pay over $152,000 in back wages to 96 Oklahoma women denied employment because of gender discrimination. A U.S. Department of Labor audit showed women applicants, who were equally or better qualified than men hired, were rejected.[31]

While the prison industry was experiencing a decline, largely because privatization was under fire in the late 20th century. There had been widespread reports of escapes, inmate violence, and deplorable conditions in such private facilities. Declining crime rates reduced the need for prisons, but speculative prison building had increased competition.

But the company and the industry as a whole rebounded in the early 2000s, following a massive increase in the number of illegal immigrant detentions in the wake of 9/11. This created a new market for its facilities. From 2001 to 2011, CCA revenue increased 88 percent, and they received at least $1 billion in revenue for each of the eight years from 2003 to 2011. In 2012, CCA derived 30 percent of its revenue from federal contracts. In 2012 some $546 million for CCA came from federal contracts with the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshals Service. Although they have denied lobbying, private prison corporations specifically target Republican legislators over immigration "reform." The companies' success in lobbying for immigrant detention was similar to their harnessing the zeitgeists of the preceding decades, from "Tough On Crime" and privatization in the 1980s and 1990s.[32]

The T. Don Hutto Residential Center is a former medium-security prison in Taylor, Texas, which, from 2006 to 2009, held immigrant detainees ages 2 and up under a pass-through contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division of Homeland Security.[33] After local and national protests, federal officials announced on August 6, 2009, that it would no longer house immigrant families in this prison.[34] Instead, only female detainees will be housed there. In September 2009, the last families left the facility and were moved to the Berks Family Residential Center in Pennsylvania.[35](owned by the Nakamoto Group). In November 2015, a hunger strike at the Hutto Center quickly grew to include 500 immigrant females. They were protesting their extended detention in this center.[36]

The Eloy Detention Center of Arizona, operated by CCA, has had 14 detainee deaths in 12 years, including five by suicide. Congressman Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., said these events made it "the deadliest immigration detention center in the U.S.;" in late July 2015 he called for an independent investigation into the most recent suicide.[37]

This huge 2,304-bed facility appears to serve multiple federal detention constituencies: U.S. Marshals Service, TRANSCOR, Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Pascua, and the USAF, with multiple security levels. It is located in Florence, AZ and has an entirely male population.[38]

In April 2016, an application for a child-care license for the Dilley detention facility, which is run by Corrections Corporation of America, is still pending. This facility houses 2,400 male and female detainees.[39] An inspection in April of that facility found 12 deficiencies. Those included: all playgrounds showing worn AstroTurf and exposed seams, creating a potential tripping hazard; and unsecured medical supplies, such as scalpels and used syringes, seen on top of counters. No temporary license for the Dilley facility will be issued until these problems are corrected.[40]

CCA closed the Huerfano County Correctional Center at Walsenburg, Colorado, in 2010. CCA appealed an initial county assessment of $30.5 million in property taxes for 2010. CCA's deal with the county specified CCA would pay only $19 million for 2011 and $15 million for each of the next three years.[43]

As of June 2013, Kentucky did not renew its contract with Corrections Corporation of America for the Marion Adjustment Center in St. Mary, ending three decades of contracting with private companies to incarcerate inmates for the state.[44]

The Lee Adjustment Center, in Beattyville, Lee County, held Vermont prisoners in addition to those from Kentucky, until 2015. In September 2004 a riot broke out involving Kentucky and Vermont prisoners.[45]

The Otter Creek Correctional Center, located in Wheelwright, Floyd county, suffered a riot in July 2001, involving Kentucky and Indiana male prisoners. It was closed by CCA and converted to a women's prison.[46] Following numerous reports of sexual abuse by its staff, including a chaplain, of female inmates from Hawaii and Kentucky, those states removed their prisoners from the facility in August 2009. CCA closed the facility in 2013.[47]

Appleton, Minnesota, in Swift County, is home to a vacant medium-security prison, the Prairie Correctional Facility, which CCA closed in 2010.[48] Although the state corrections needs additional capacity, neither the Department of Corrections nor the governor favor leasing the prison or contracting with CCA to operate it. In November 2015, state Corrections Commissioner Tom Roy said he was not ruling out use of Appleton, but said he does not like the basic principle underlying private prisons. "The notion of incarceration for profit," he said, "I don't think is very popular in this state."[49]

The Diamondback Correctional Facility in Watonga, Oklahoma, constructed in 1998, suffered rioting in May 2004. CCA closed it in 2010.[50] The North Fork Correctional Facility, near Texas in Sayre, Oklahoma, and constructed in 1998, suffered rioting in April and June 2000,[51] and in October 2011,[52] and was closed in November 2015.[53] In January 2016, Joe Allbaugh, despite having no correctional experience and best known for his managing the gubernatorial campaign of George W. Bush and his subsequent appointment as the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was appointed by Governor Mary Fallin as the Interim Corrections Commissioner of Oklahoma after his predecessor oversaw two badly botched executions.[54] In 2002, he had successfully recommended that he be replaced at FEMA by Michael D. Brown, of Hurricane Katrina notoriety. His "Allbaugh Company," clients included The Shaw Group winner of a bid to refurbish buildings and provide emergency housing and Halliburton subsidiary KBR which received $29.8 million contracts to rebuild Navy bases in Louisiana and Mississippi.[55][56] Brown, who was an Oklahoma native and Allbaugh's old friend from Republican state politics, was first hired by Allbaugh as FEMA's general counsel, despite having padded his legal and emergency services credentials.[57] Allbaugh quickly put in process an initiative to lease North Fork from CCA, remove Oklahoma state prisoners who had been kept in county jail work centers, often near families and utilized by their communities for county maintenance functions such as litter pickup and park maintenance, and ship them to Sayre. The prison is far from the mostly urban centers from which inmates had been sentenced and held, such as Tulsa (230 miles) and Oklahoma City (130 miles), making visitation by family members and support systems difficult.[58] The contract negotiated by Allbaugh to lease CCA's empty 2,600-bed for-profit prison in Sayre while closing the state’s 15 inmate work centers was voted on in May 2016, by the Oklahoma Board of Corrections, which was not authorized to discuss the contract publicly. It had begun emptying in 2012 after California began retrieving its prisoners.[59]

Treatment of inmates and disclosure of shortcomings of oversight[edit]

Responding to an inmate's death in 2006 at CCA's immigration jail in Eloy, Arizona, government investigators found the medical care provided meant that "detainee welfare is in jeopardy". A subsequent inmate death at the facility resulted in an additional inquiry and "another scathing report," according to the New York Times.[60]

In 2013, CCA confirmed that an internal review showed the corporation had falsified records involving about 4,800 employee hours over a period of seven months, at its Idaho State Correctional Center.[61] In 2014 a subsequent KPMG audit showed the actual overbilling was for over 26,000 hours. Governor Butch Otter ordered Idaho State Police to investigate to see if criminal charges should be brought. Otter had received a total of $20,000 in campaign contributions from employees of the company since 2003. [62] In March, the state announced that the FBI was taking over the investigation, as well as investigating CCA operations in other states.[63]

CCA has been criticized for hiring "revolving door" executives from agencies with which it has contracted. Harley Lappin and J. Michael Quinlan, former directors of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, were hired soon after resignations from BOP following scandal at the agency.[64]

In the fall of 2012, state auditors of the Lake Erie Correctional Institution in Ohio, which CCA had acquired and operated since January of that same year, deducted $500,000 for contract violations and inadequate staffing. The prison had suffered a high rate of violence and contraband drugs after CCA took it over.[65]

In August 2009 the ACLU filed suit against CCA and related government agencies because government officials who were responsible for overseeing the care provided failed to provide data about conditions. The Obama administration acknowledged that immigration detention facilities had suffered rates of death of 1 in 10 deaths among inmates, and that this data had been omitted from a list of deaths presented to Congress earlier that year. Two of those deaths took place at CCA's Eloy Detention Center.[66] CCA's Eloy jail had nine known fatalities – more than any other immigration jail under contract to the federal government, according to documents obtained in 2009 under FOIA requests by the New York Times and the ACLU.[66]

CCA lobbyists have worked to pass or defeat private prison legislation in many localities, including Texas, New York, Illinois and Tennessee.[67] CCA spent $17.4 million lobbying the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Office of Management and Budget, the Bureau of Prisons, both houses of Congress, and others between 2002 and 2012. This sum included $1.9 million in campaign contributions.[68][69]

According to the Boston Phoenix, CCA spent more than $2.7 million from 2006 through September 2008 on lobbying for stricter laws, in order to generate prisoners.[70] CCA responded that it does not lobby lawmakers to increase jail time or push for longer sentences under any circumstance, noting that it "educates officials on the benefits of public-private partnership but does not lobby on crime and sentencing policies."[68]

Among its risk factors listed in its 10-K annual report, as required by the SEC, CCA includes the following:

"The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them."[26]

In 2010 the FBI conducted an investigation of CCA practices following an incident at their prison in Idaho Correctional Center in which a prison inmate was beaten unconscious in an inmate attack. A video released by the Associated Press showed the incident underway as guards watched without taking action. Because the matter was under litigation, the company had said publicly only that the release of the video is "an unnecessary security risk to our staff, the inmates entrusted to our care and ultimately to the public." CCA said it was cooperating with investigators.[72]

In March 2010, the ACLU filed suit against CCA in Idaho, alleging that guards were not protecting inmates from other violent inmates.[73] In February 2014, the federal judge hearing the case awarded $349,000 to the ACLU for its costs in bringing the action.[74] A settlement was reached to correct conditions at the prisons run by CCA.

In November 2012, eight inmates filed a federal lawsuit in Idaho alleging that CCA prison officials partially ceded control of the Idaho Correctional Center to gang leaders. The lawsuit cited Idaho Department of Correction reports suggesting that the Aryan Knights and the Severely Violent Criminals were able to wrest control from staff members after prison officials began housing members of the same gangs together in some cell blocks to reduce violent clashes.[75][76] In September 2013, a federal judge held CCA in contempt of court for persistently understaffing the Idaho Correctional Center in direct violation of a legal settlement.[77] In October 2013, CCA was encouraged not to bid on a new contract to operate the Idaho Correctional Center. The state re-assumed control of its prison on July 1, 2014.[78]

Also in 2012, former and current employees in Lieutenant positions, who were categorized as "Salary Employees," filed lawsuits arguing that their daily duties and work hours were not that of a salary employee. Specifically, they sued CCA because their actual duties were not those of typical salaried employees in criminal justice, nor did they have the authority to "Hire and Fire" as a salaried employee should. CCA lost the lawsuit and paid out hundreds of thousands to its current and former Lieutenants.[citation needed] After losing the suit, CCA continued to classify their Lieutenants as salaried employees, saying, "It's cheaper to pay out law suits every couple years than it is to pay them for the (overtime) hours they actually work."[citation needed]

Following a series of escalating disturbances, including a riot involving 200–300 prisoners in June that sent eleven inmates to the hospital, four inmates died and four others were hospitalized as a result of a fight between white gangs on September 13, 2015 at the Cimarron Correctional Facility in Cushing, Oklahoma. It was the deadliest event in the Oklahoma corrections’ history. Interim Corrections Commissioner Joe Allbaugh said, “We don't have the flexibility in our system to segregate these gangs, so they are together in close quarters and so sometimes things happen.” Though private prison companies say they deliver equal or superior service, Allbaugh says he’s seen some differences. “Sometimes private prisons are a little more lax with their population than we would like to see..." The American Civil Liberties Union (ALCU) of Oklahoma director says it receives “a great deal” of complaints, “I would say we get roughly double the number per capita from private prison inmates from public prison inmates.” The complaints range from safety concerns to lack of appropriate food and medical care. CCA declined multiple requests for a recorded interview. Allbaugh insists there’s no talk of ending CCA’s contract for the Cushing facility. Oklahoma last sent a notice to cure to a private prison in October to inform Cimarron Correctional Facility it was more than seven months behind in reporting use of force standards and reportable incidents. According to DOC’s contract with CCA gives five days to submit proper forms, the state was waiting on reports dating back to March 2015. The ACLU’s Brady Henderson says this points to a practice of concealing records within corrections systems. “Even in public facilities, there's an incredible amount of secrecy," a lack of transparency. "It's already hard to know. It gets 10 times harder with a private facility,” he said. Allbaugh says for now, his agency is stuck. “As much as I don't think the state ought to be doing business with private prisons, I'm glad they're around because they're our only relief valve available to us during this crunch.” [82] In March 2016, a contraband cell phone video offered a graphic perspective into a series of violent disturbances at Cimarron Correctional Facility in Cushing. A group of inmates threw another prisoner off a tier.[83]

In August 2016, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh C. Johnson announced that the group would be looking at the use of detaining immigrants in private detention facilities, similar to the facilities that Corrections Corp of America operates.[84] As of 2015, federal revenues made up 51% of its total income. CCA operates 22 federal facilities that have a capacity of 25,851 prisoners.[84]

^ abcMcDonald, Douglas C. (1994). "PUBLIC IMPRISONMENT BY PRIVATE MEANS: The Re-emergence of Private Prisons and Jails in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia". The British Journal of Criminology. 34: 29–48. JSTOR23638186. (registration required (help)).